Page 16 - Why Do You Deceive Yourself ?

14 WHY DO YOU DECEIVE YOURSELF?

We are told the true purpose of creation in the Qur'an which Allah
sent down as a guide to His servants. This purpose is to serve our Lord
Who created us and allows us to live. Allah describes this purpose in a
verse of the Qur'an as follows:
… I only created jinn and man to worship Me. (Surat adh-
Dhariyat: 56)
So the world with all the features described above, and its seas,
lakes, oceans, flowers, trees, mountains and living things, is an envi-
ronment specially created by Allah to test whether or not people fulfill

this obligation. The universe and all the systems in it, stars, planets
and other celestial bodies, have been created so that people may see
the greatness and boundless mercy of our Lord and praise His power.
In the same way, each of the events which a person experiences in life
and all the places in which he finds himself are parts of the test which
he undergoes in the world. Allah informs us in the following verse of
the Qur'an that the purpose of creation and placing people in the
world is to test them:
We created man from a mingled drop to test him, and We
made him hearing and seeing. (Surat al-Insan: 2)
In this testing environment, a person is responsible for consider-
ing Allah's instructions and prohibitions at every moment and acting
in such a way as to earn His approval. We are told in the Qur'an that
people who reject or evade this responsibility will be repaid for eter-

nity with the torment of Hell because of their enormous ingratitude
for all the blessings Allah provides.
In spite of this most people are strangely insensitive. Forgetting
the true purpose of their lives, they find different priorities for them-
selves and adopt different aims. They struggle for months, even years,
for worldly purposes but they do not even want to think about their